Story: my friend had a mouse infestation. She had cleaned up this mouse mess on her own several times, but the mice had returned. Her apartment management company has been a complete dick about it, blaming her, refusing to do any pest control.
I gathered with a couple of do-gooders and we donned tyvec suits (which was fun) and masks and gloves and spent a couple of hours picking mouse poop (I preferred to refer to it as “poopsicles”) out of the carpet, washing the walls with bleach, sweeping out poopsicles and more poopsicles from under the stove, and then stuffing fine steel wool into every opening, every crevice.
Mostly it was satisfying. I like a project like this. I like watching people clean out the homes of hoarders who, bless their hearts, are just trying to hang on to something in a world where you can’t hang on to anything. It’s very frightening. I get it.
I love watching videos where they show how anything, truly anything, can be cleaned up. Rats? Put on your tyvek suit, and toss ’em in the dumpster. A bathtub full of human feces? Get the shovel!
Okay, on occasion, they decide the house must be razed and the soil on which it rests removed and put into a toxic waste vault in Nevada, but usually they conquer filth.
Oddly, the next day, where I was sore was my butt. I guess cleaning up mouse poop is a great butt exercise.
My friend went home a couple of days later, and her cat presented another dead mouse, and we all were like, Well. Fuck.
Story: I sit around a table with my aunts and uncles, and we discuss hard times of the past, and how family dynamics have affected everyone. “I used to think this family was normal, the way people almost always get along and enjoy each other’s company, but then I realized this family is not normal.” The richness of my family envelops me at Christmas, and I want to say for the nth time that I did nothing to deserve it, and it is delicious.
The board games we had planned to play go untouched as we talk, rehash, reframe, and some people step out to have a private cry, and they are comforted.
I retell the story leading up to my first year of college, when a huge conflict within my nuclear family was eased by support from extended family who were sitting next to me. It was a story about how people we love deeply sometimes behave like complete assholes, and also they love us very much, and in time we make peace. I think, I’m totally way past over it, but one of the lessons of my parents’ divorce is that you’re never over anything. Your mind and heart recycle stories, characters, and wounds will always feel a little sore from time to time.
It’s true that events in that story are healed, and still hurt, and make me wonder, and matter deeply, and don’t matter at all.
Story: I have several nieces (technically cousins once removed but whatever) who are ALMOST too big to throw in the air or over a shoulder, but I managed again! This is why I lift weights occasionally!
Christmas day, crammed around four huge round tables, I turn around and whip out the immortal cloth napkin tricks that restaurants can provide to the preschool set. My best bit is covering my face, changing my expression, and revealing a sequence of different silliness. The child laughs like someone at a comedy show after three drinks.
The child wears a napkin on her head, and I make a note: she must be told about the family reunion when we divided up teams by Napkins and Non-Napkins, with the Napkins wearing napkins on their heads.
She’s right on track, that one.
Going On 